Observations focused on the problems of an underdeveloped country, Venezuela, with some serendipity about the world (orchids, techs, science, investments, politics) at large. A famous Venezuelan, Juan Pablo Perez Alfonzo, referred to oil as the devil's excrement. For countries, easy wealth appears indeed to be the sure path to failure. Venezuela might be a clear example of that.

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Venezuela: Where everything is truly backwards

March 24, 2010

(Comrade, sorry to interrupt you activities, can you tell me where Oswaldo Alvarez Paz´house is?)

In another demonstration of long term planning, responsibility and caring for productivity and the values of hard work, President Hugo Chávez has just announced that Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of Easter week (next week) will also be holidays next week in order to save electricity. We have an eight day holiday for the whole country starting Saturday.

Everything is backwards these days in Venezuela.

Note added: After Hugo had his whim, the Government realized the announced “Feriado Nacional” could not be “Nacional”, it is end of the month, tax payments are due on Wednesday and a country can’t function like that for eight days, so we get the exceptions:

thanks Juancho, my fault, I’m talking about the maintenance works, I have to use the thesaurus 😉
But I think this makes (as much as it can) sense. To do the maintenance works you have to shut the plants down for some time, allowing for cooling sometimes. Doing this on normal demand (if there is no surplus) would lead to blackouts. Probably they avoided to do this also to supply as much as possible thermoelectric energy. But doing so for long time you risk to have a failure.
I would expect some journalist asking this the minister, oh, wait, no interviews here.

The English word, “reparation,” means compensation (normal usage), and has nothing to do with “repairs,” which is what I think is meant here. As in, to repair = para reparar.

But the really interesting question is, WHO is actually slated to fix what? There has been an almost complete lace of credible journalism investigating the absolute incapacity of the Chavez routine to fix any goddam thing. So I’m thinking this this new talk about fixing something is all bullshit, unless someone is being hired in to do the actual job.

Again, most journalism looks superficially into the Chavez regime’s lack of planing and political will to maintain and fix the power grid, the Guri turbines, et al. But the truth might be graver: they canno fix anything whatsoever, regardless of their will or desire.

So just this once, perhaps someone can follow this and report what actually gets done on this “reparations” adventure.

Gringo, normally yes (but I’dont have numbers here).
I think they have to stop several plants for the reparations and this could lead to black-outs (more if the demand is the normal). Better you have the people on vacation as this happens. Less traffic jam, no damage to the industry equipment…
A lot of plants was probably running 24/7 as the Great Leader demanded…(and nobody wanted to contradict him) only to get overused. If this is not done, then they would probably fail, leading to cascadating black-outs.
I think this is the reason for the measure, more than the couple of cm they could save in Guri (not needed anymore, wasn’t it?).

I can’t agree more with Canuck.. they know something we don’t
Chavez announced the extra holidays during a TV program to cheer and support venezuelan atheletes.
Maybe something bold related with electricity shortage or something related to economy or..worse… September elections???????

Finally a good practical idea as long as everybody turns of their air conditioners before they go to the beach. However, I was thinking more about adding a day and praying a novena to save Guri! Now I spent a number of Holy Weeks in Venezuela and left on my own as nobody wanted to work. If you want to avoid beach crowds, church is the place to go in Venezuela. Not like other Latin countries that take Holy Week seriously.
I was also thinking something like this would help the ratings Alo Presidente. Si?

Workers scheduled to work next Mon – Wed will now be entitled to double pay due to the newly announced holidays, further saddling small business owners with more costs… at the same time everyone should be paying taxes to Seniat while banks are closed for the holiday… and Nero fiddling while the country burns

I second that Torres but not because Diosdado will pull the plug but because Globovision is on the verge of going bust. RCTV just fired several actors amongst them Norkys whatever her name is. Mario Silva hinted at big problems in Globo on his program last night.

Maybe they want people paying attention to something else while they make some kind of announcement during these days. In any case, I agree with island cannuck: “The problem must be approaching the critical point very fast.”